Determinants of brand loyalty for prescription brand medicine by doctors in Nairobi

Abstract

Tills study sort to solve the problem of what are the determinants of brand loyalty of prescription brand medicine among doctors in Nairobi? To achieve this the objective of the study were to establish determinants of doctors loyalty on prescription brand medicine to rank the most important determinants of prescription brand medicine and to determine significant difference between physician and general practitioners on their influence towards loyalty. The population of interest for this study comprised all doctors both the specialist and general practitioners in Nairobi. Specialist in this case only refers to physicians. The sample frame used was the Kenya medical directory of 2001. According to the Kenya medical directory (2001) 114 physicians and 345 general practitioners existed in Nairobi making it a total of 459 doctors. A sample size of 60 doctors in the proportion of 15 physicians and 45 general practitioners was used. Convenient sampling was used to select the sample units. Primary data was used in the study and data was collected using questionnaire comprising both open and close ended questions. The questionnaire was divided into three sections. Section A collected biodata information section B information on determinants of loyalty and their degree of importance and finally section C information on the ranking of the most important determinants of brand loyalty. Each factor importance was rated on a 5 degrees of importance Likert scale where 1 = not important at all and 5 = very important. Research assistants were fellow medical representative and questionnaire were administered to the prescribers as the researcher and research assistants visited their clinics or area of practice. Collected data was analyzed by use of descriptive statistics. These included tables and percentages to represent response rate on information collected. Table of frequencies was used to summarize determinants considered important in the choice of prescription brand medicine. Factor analysis was also used for analysis due to the large number of variables or objects considered. A response rate of 90% was achieved. The Likert rating results indicated most important factors as medicine availability and patient buying power then followed by patient compliance, supportive evidence of the drug and reasonable price in that order. From this study, it was found that the degree of importance and therefore ranking of factors was circumstantial in most cases. The patients background and condition was observed to be most critical in influencing the ranking factors. This meant one factor could be important in certain situation and less important in others. There were no statistically significant difference in the factors influencing loyalty between physicians and general practitioners. Doctors were observed to be scientific experts who made decisions on their choice of prescription brand medicine rationally. Rationality in decision making was mainly due to the nature of their profession. Marketers of prescription brand medicine should therefore design marketing programs aimed at influencing the doctors rationally. Marketers should also not ignore the other factors considered fairly important such as sponsorship of conferences and medical camps and also extra services rendered to doctors. This factors augment the efforts put towards rational appeals. Marketers should also understand doctors in terms of their age specialization and duration of practice. To be competitive effective cost management should be undertaken. This study was conducted in Nairobi and therefore one can't generalize the observed doctors prescription behaviour to apply in rural areas. The study was broad and dealt with many different factors of medicine prescription loyalty. Future studies could be carried out concentrating on each of the various factors that doctors considered in prescribing medicine.